LayerZero has unveiled ATLAS, an exchange infrastructure layer built on its Zero blockchain for crypto trading platforms and financial institutions, while ZRO has climbed more than 16% following the announcement.
A Headless Exchange Backend
ATLAS, short for Aggregated Trading, Liquidity and Settlement, will serve as a backend for trading venues without operating a consumer-facing exchange of its own, allowing exchanges, brokers and financial firms to keep control of their users and interfaces. The system brings trade matching, clearing, settlement and risk management into a single stack, functions that financial institutions often handle through separate infrastructure. LayerZero plans to launch ATLAS later this year.
Built on Zero, the layer 1 network LayerZero introduced in February, ATLAS will use the blockchain's zero-knowledge proof architecture to verify trades onchain while handling workloads designed for financial markets. The Zero network was introduced alongside involvement from Citadel Securities, ARK Invest, Intercontinental Exchange and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Zero was designed to scale to as many as 2 million transactions per second while separating transaction execution from verification through zero-knowledge proofs.
Open and Institutional Configurations
The infrastructure will support two configurations. Open ATLAS will be available for crypto applications, prediction markets and other public financial products, while Institutional ATLAS will allow operators to apply their own access and trading requirements. Both will use the same underlying engine, although institutional market operators will determine which participants can trade and what rules apply to individual markets.
ATLAS is being built to connect three groups. Trading venues will operate the customer-facing platforms, market creators will decide what assets and products can trade, and market makers will supply liquidity. Market creators will be able to establish markets covering spot crypto assets, perpetual futures, stocks, bonds, commodities, meme tokens and prediction contracts. LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino said the infrastructure was designed as a neutral backend for an asset market that increasingly trades continuously and across multiple venues.
Sub-Millisecond Latency at Scale
LayerZero said its current ATLAS environment has produced sub-millisecond median latency, while p95 and p99 latency reached 1.418 milliseconds and 2.641 milliseconds, respectively. The company plans to initially provision the system for 200,000 transactions per second at launch.
ZRO Secures Zero and Determines Rebates
ZRO will have several functions across Zero and ATLAS. ZRO will secure Zero through delegated proof-of-stake and serve as the blockchain's gas and governance token. Trading venues operating through ATLAS can also stake ZRO to receive higher fee rebates. The highest rebate tier can require a stake equal to as much as 1% of the token's total supply.
Open ATLAS will charge a single trading fee, with venues receiving rebates between 20% and 65% depending on their ZRO stake, trading volume or a combination. After the venue rebate is deducted, 25% of the remaining fee revenue will be paid to the market creator. The other 75% will be used to purchase ZRO and permanently burn the acquired tokens. ZRO rose sharply after ATLAS was announced, gaining more than 16% over 24 hours to trade near $1.26.
Expanding Beyond Cross-Chain Transfers
ATLAS pushes LayerZero into trading infrastructure after the company built its main business around moving assets and messages between blockchains. LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard has processed more than $290 billion in cross-chain volume spanning more than 160 networks. The expansion follows a difficult period for LayerZero's interoperability business after the April attack on Kelp DAO's rsETH bridge, which saw attackers drain 116,500 rsETH worth roughly $292 million. LayerZero later tightened bridge security around single-signer deployments.
